Den här debutromanen utspelar sig under en dag under protesterna mot WTO i Seattle 1999. Förlagets beskrivning: ”In this raw and breathtaking novel, Yapa marries a deep rage with a deep humanity, and in doing so casts an unflinching eye on the nature and limits of compassion.”

Förlagets beskrivning: ”Jed – young, gay, black, out of rehab and out of prospects in his hometown of Chicago–flees to the city of his fantasies, a museum of modernism and decadence: Berlin. […] An intoxicating, provocative novel of appetite, identity, and self-construction, Darryl Pinckney’s Black Deutschland tells the story of an outsider, trapped between a painful past and a tenebrous future, in Europe’s brightest and darkest city.”

Det här verkar vara en både egensinnig och modig roman. Förlagets beskrivning: ”By gracefully weaving a study of the psychological effects of a militarized state upon its citizenry with topics as diverse as microtonal music and cloud physics, Square Wave signals the triumphant arrival of a young writer certain to be considered one of the most ambitious and intelligent of his generation.”

Titeln ljuger inte, den verkar faktiskt nästan innehålla alla Smiths dikter, som fyller de 700 sidorna. Ur förlagstexten: ”Stevie Smith is among the most popular British poets of the twentieth century. Her poem ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ has been widely anthologized, and her life was celebrated in the classic 1978 movie Stevie. This new and updated edition of the collected poems of Stevie Smith includes hundreds of works from her thirty-five year career.”

För några år sedan guidade Wink flugfiskare i Montana, idag är han en mycket aktad novellspecialist. Ur förlagets beskrivning: ”In the tradition of Richard Ford, Annie Proulx, and Kent Haruf comes a dazzling debut story collection by a young writer from the American West who has been published in The New Yorker, Granta, and The Best American Short Stories.”

Cities I’ve Never Lived In av Sara Majka (Graywolf Press)

Den här samlingen berättelser, länkade till varandra, har bland annat prisats av Kelly Link. Förlagets beskrivning låter löftesrik: ”A book about belonging, and how much of yourself to give up in the pursuit of that, Cities I’ve Never Lived In offers stories that reveal, with great sadness and great humor, the ways we are most of all citizens of the places where we cannot be.” Du kan provläsa häroch här.

Tillsammans med DeLillos roman ligger nog den här, ironiskt nog en australiensisk roman, överst på min önskelista i vår. Ur förlagets beskrivning: ”Eliza travels to Sydney to deal with the estate of her Aunt Dodge, and finds Maxine, a hitherto unknown cousin, occupying Dodge’s apartment. When legal complications derail plans to live it up on their inheritance, the women’s lives become consumed by absurd attempts to deal with Australian tax law, as well their own mounting boredom and squalor. The most astonishing debut novel of the decade, Dodge Rose calls to mind Henry Green in its skewed use of colloquial speech, Joyce in its love of inventories, and William Gaddis in its virtuoso lampooning of law, high finance, and national myth.”

Engelskan Kate Tempest är bara 30 men har redan vunnit rader av priser för sin poesi, sina performances och sin musik. Nu romandebuterar hon. Ur förlagets beskrivning: ”Taking us into the homes and hearts of ordinary people, their families and their communities, Kate Tempest exposes moments of beauty, disappointment, ambition and failure. Wise but never cynical, driven by empathy and ethics, The Bricks the Built the Houses questions how we live with and love one another.”

Rivka Galchen skriver märkliga, vackra och fantasifulla böcker, och det här verkar inte vara något undantag. Ur förlagets beskrivning: ”Little Labors is a slanted, enchanted literary miscellany. Varying in length from just a sentence or paragraph to a several-page story or essay, Galchen’s puzzle pieces assemble into a shining, unpredictable, mordant picture of the ordinary-extraordinary nature of babies and literature. Anecdotal or analytic, each part opens up an odd and tender world of wonder.”